7 ways to IMPROVE ENGLISH READING skills and comprehension | Learning English Technique Lesson

hello everyone and welcome back to english with lucy so i've made a video about improving your listening and i made one about writing very recently as well and i have made one on conversation but today the time has come to make a video about improving your reading and your reading comprehension because that's what you guys have been asking for so this video is going to be jam-packed ie really really full of tips that will help you improve so whether you want to improve because you need to do a reading exam or if you just want to read for pleasure and understand more these tips are going to help you let's get started with the video now let's start with an easy one and one that you definitely will have heard before but it's so important I feel like I need to reiterate it and this is read the question now at school I remember being bored of my teachers telling me to read the question always read the question remember to read the question but having worked as a teacher and having marked so many exams oh my god so many points are lost through people miss reading the question how many times have you seen a question that says answer with one example of bah-bah-bah well if you give two examples most of the time you will not get the point because you've given too many examples or if they asked you to describe something and you provide a list it's not a description so you might lose that point so please just bear it in mind you need to read the question that was a pretty easy one let's get on to the next one now tip number two is all about practice but the best way to practice and this is by reading the news we're better to find up-to-the-minute current vocabulary that you can use in conversations that you're going to see in exams because often exams will use examples of current events or recent events so as a teacher I am always on the lookout for the best news resources for my students The Telegraph app have very kindly sponsored today's video but it wasn't a hard job for me because I already use the app on a daily basis it is the news app that I recommend to my students the reason I recommend this to my students is because it's trusted news content you can use it both online and offline so when you're connected to Wi-Fi you can download all the news stories and then when you're out and about you can catch up on everything it's excellent because you can click on the topic that is relevant and interesting to you because that's really important download it whilst you're at home or connected to Wi-Fi and then when you're on your commute or you're out and about or you're somewhere where there's bad internet or at school for example you can catch up with all the latest news stories in the section that interests you most so that's one thing that I love about it the way that you can view everything offline as well as online know it's all very well reading the news every day but how can you use the news to get as much vocabulary into your brain as possible well I would encourage you to keep a vocab diary my recommendation is keep it all on your phone use the Telegraph app try and read the articles that are relevant and interesting to you and then on the note function on your phone keep a vocab diary so you could date it every day you can note down the words that you don't understand in the app and then when you get home you can fill in that diary find out what the words mean and there you have a list to study from now you guys have probably heard all the fake news and the untrustworthy news articles going around The Telegraph is completely trusted it's well written it's well researched it's current it's up-to-the-minute and you can view it both online and offline so it's completely accessible I've left the link in the description box for anybody who wants to download it I really do encourage you to do that vocab diary because it has transformed so many of my students vocabularies right tip number three relates back a little bit to tip number two but it's really important if you want to achieve the right amount of because practice does make perfect and that is scheduled in reading time and you will be amazed at how much this can increase the amount you read every morning on your commute or or during a break work or school or you could be reading for pleasure so you could be setting aside an extra half an hour in the evening but make sure you make reading part of your routine because otherwise other things take priority and you will miss out because improving your reading and improving your other language skills really is like running a marathon you can't cram it you can't do something once and then inspect to see a massive improvement it needs to be little and often that's why little tasks like scheduling in and writing a vocab diary are so so effective let me know in the comments below when you most like to read or if you're going to schedule in reading time and when that's going to be now another way you could look at scheduling in reading time is setting yourself a reading goal so depending on your level schedule in a certain amount of articles every single day or however many chapters or pages of a book every single day you know I'm not reading to improve my English I'm reading for entertainment and to keep up to date with current affairs I like to set myself the goal of reading at least 5 articles in the morning whilst I have my coffee I skim read them and it's just the right amount of time for me obviously if I have more time I'll read more I do like to start off the day with my set amount I can go over but I can't go under so look at scheduling in a goal for each day now the next hip is a little bit strange and it might not work for everybody but it really really works for me it worked for me when I was doing my exams at university because I found studying so boring but I needed to ingest a huge amount of articles essays textbooks literature in general and something I found incredibly helpful and something that made reading much more pleasurable and much more enjoyable was reading using the voice of a celebrity in my head and my celebrity of choice was always Stephen Fry who I've mentioned in previous videos he speaks with received pronunciation he's very very intelligent he's a comedian he has a lovely voice and I used to read through all of the essays literature for my university degree in in his voice and I just got into a habit and I found that it made everything less dreadful and I've seen that other people do it too because I get messages on Instagram and comments on YouTube saying whenever I read anything in English I do it in your voice loosely and at first I thought how strange and then I thought oh that's what I do just even Fri so yeah pick a voice of somebody that you really really like and and try using their voice in your head next time you read something if you're reading to practice your English let me know which person you choose in the comments because I think it'll be quite funny to see who everyone chooses now the next tip is for people who just really aren't satisfied with their reading comprehension if you feel like you are underperforming in exams or you're not getting the most out of reading for pleasure this tips for you I want you to step back from your reading and evaluate what's going wrong why why are you dissatisfied in order to find a cure you need to find the problem you need to ask yourself why are you lacking vocabulary is it that every other sentence you can't understand because you don't understand the words are you lacking technical vocabulary so you'll fine reading a general story but if you read about politics or science you're completely stumped stumped means confused is it that you really struggle with tenses is it that you can't work out which past tense is being used or if they're talking about the present or the future is it rather than the language used is it that you find reading too tiring or too boring is it that you run out of time in an exam you need to think about what is going wrong and then find yourself a solution or ask some I'd help you find a solution I can give you all the tips to apply to your reading but if you don't work out what's wrong in the first place you're going to have a tough time improving so I invite you to think about your reading what is going wrong write it in the comment section and let's all help each other to improve our reading skills I can identify what's wrong with my reading when I read in Spanish for example I get bored i skim read I miss the point and I don't try hard enough to understand the whole passage what do I need to do I need to work on summarizing every paragraph or every page to make sure that I get a clear grasp of the context and just what's going on in the piece so what's your problem and if you can what do you need to do to fight it comment down below my next tip is going to sound weird as well but it's something that really worked for me and this is use a pen and this helps you in a couple of different ways one of the obvious ones which you will know about is you can underline words but it is really really important to underline key words or even cross out words that you think are not relevant as well I wouldn't completely cross them out but maybe put a line through if you think no no this stuff doesn't matter just the key words but another use for your trusty pen is use it to help you speed read so you use it as a pointer this is going to really help anybody that struggles with reading a text in a short amount of time in a lot of exams you're under time pressure so you want to read as much as possible in the shortest amount of time so I find that by using a pen and following under the words like this I know I look ridiculous right now but I want you guys to speed read really helps me read much more quickly you can try it out see if it works for you take an article read it first without the pen read it again with the pen time yourself see which one is quicker it might take some getting used to but learning to speed read and using a pointer it can transform the way you perform in reading exams right guys that's it with the tips for today I really really encourage you to click on the link in the description box and download the Telegraph app I've already said how great it is it was what I was using before and it was an absolute pleasure to be invited to work with them because I love recommending things I truly believe in I'm confident that if you set yourself a goal of reading to 3 or 5 articles a day for example you really really will improve your reading comprehension over time don't forget to connect with me on all of my social media I've got my facebook I've got my Instagram and I've got my Twitter and I will see you soon for another lesson yeah you

Channel: English with Lucy

Views: 343,988

Keywords: 7 ways to improve english reading skills, ways to improve english reading, ways to improve reading, improve english reading skills, improve reading skills, english reading comprehension, improve english comprehension, improve english reading comprehension, english reading, ielts reading, fce reading, cae reading, toefl reading, english with lucy, learn english with lucy, english reading tips, english reading comprehension tips, how to improve reading, how to improve english

Id: sWZ9LNXZSvA

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 03 2018